Foster announces £48million investment in telecoms

December 3, 2009

This announcement from DETI is interesting/encouraging. But – I don't know, you tell me – is 2Mb/s up good enough to support digital businesses? I would have thought synchronous 10 Mb/s would be needed as a minimum. 10 Mb/s for consumers is really quite good, but for digital content producers?

The Next Generation Broadband project involves the introduction of new technology to increase broadband speeds in Northern Ireland over the next 18 months. It is targeted at areas across Northern Ireland, both urban and rural, which will deliver the greatest economic benefit by receiving high speed broadband.

BT is investing close to £30million in the project, with a further £18million coming from the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (DETI), under the European Regional Development Fund's (ERDF) European Sustainable Competitiveness Programme and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) Rural Development Programme.

Under the project, BT will deploy fibre to the cabinet technology to a majority of businesses with other fixed line solutions being used where appropriate. The tender specified that businesses in urban areas should receive a minimum downstream speed of 10Mb/s and ones in rural areas 2Mb/s. This will be delivered with many businesses set to receive speeds well in excess of those benchmarks.